Bobbi, I take it you were painting the lower parts of your walls which I have trouble getting down to as I just can't kneel anymore. I use a low stool to sit on, which still hurts my knees getting up, but is the easiest option. When I have finished painting I have taken to lying flat out on my back on the bed for a good half hour and really stretch everything. That seems to help a lot and as it is around the 5pm slump time, it revitalises two ways. What sort of paint are you using? Normally any acrylic or water based paint washes out easily. Everyone knows when I have been painting, I went up the shop one time not knowing I had a huge blob of green paint right down the underside of my arm, clearly visible to anyone behind me. If shampoo isn't removing it, try rubbing straight conditioner into it and leave 10-15 mins. I find hand cream quickly removes it from my skin but I do have very streaky fingernails that nothing seems to be working on. Looks like the paint will have to grow out on them. If I know I am likely to get paint in my hair I also keep a supply of cheap shower caps for protection. Astraea - we are fine thanks, all the fires are in country areas, although some kids deliberately lit one in western Sydney this afternoon. The Metropolitan Firies have thermal imaging and they can spot a fire almost as soon as it starts which makes their response time much shorter. We also had a truck catch fire and set bush off beside a major freeway but the firies hit it all with foam and made short work of it. Still just over 34 here at 11pm - roll on 2am and the southerly!!!!!

So to start at the beginning - hustlep2........how is it that the wood grain can still be seen through paint? I have the same lovely honey coloured cabinets and I need to refinish as opposed to replace. They are solid oak and in beautiful shape, but need to be brought into this decade. The counter top was updated about 2 years ago and I can work with it, deciding what and how to refinish the cupboards is not so easy. My husband is horrified at the thought of painting wood.....I know, it's old school thought I suppose, but I can appreciate his feeling too. I'm leaning to a two-tone design, maybe paint and stain.....not sure. We just bought the house 4 months ago (was built in 89) and have replaced all carpetting with solid provincial coloured oak flooring (not dark, not light....the colour is in between both) and porcelain tiles that look like slabs of marble with burned orange, deep browns, cream and grays running through it on a rich beige background. I am using colours and materials that lend a tuscan flavour.......tuscan sun on the walls in the living room with an accent wall in peacock feather, furniture is cappacino coloured. Very warm and inviting. There's just the crown molding left to do and that'll be in white as is the all the trim in the room. I want the kitchen and dining rooms to be bright, but still nod to the tuscan flavour in the rest of the house. The kitchen opens to a sun room overlooking a pool, deck and the river in our back yard (facing south / east). On the other side of the kitchen (L shaped with the kitchen in the inside corner of the L) is the dining room with huge windows overlooking the back as well. There is lots of natural light. I LOVE the tuscan sun colour (kind of a deep clay pot colour really), it's so warm and inviting. Any thoughts or words of advice to offer for the kitchen? 2 days ago · Like olldroo If you want a Tuscan look, then do not paint your cupboards. Fads come and fads go but if you look back over the years you will see timber is timeless, it is always around. Timber can always be polished or oiled to rejuvenate it but paint needs regular maintenance. 44 hours ago · 1 lauramaepatrie Olidroo, thank you for your comment. I agree with you completely about the paint or not to paint thing. I'm just cringing at the amount of work it is going to take to bring back a number of the cupboard doors. The cupboards as I said are in beautiful shape.....nothing is broken, no doors or drawer fronts are broken, cracked or chipped or even hanging askew, HOWEVER a few chosen door fronts (the ones in key places that are used 1,000 X a day as opposed to maybe 1 X per week like the others) have worn finishes. The wear is so bad on some that the finish is long gone and some of the surface wood grain has darkened. I have 26 door fronts (2 of which are very large pantry doors) and 7 drawer fronts in total, so I am really trying to figure out what we can do WITHOUT having to completely sand the old finish on all of these cupboard fronts. I should add that we are beyond middle aged (unless we are going to live to a VERY old age lol) and he have remodeled and redecorated many houses over the years usually just getting them completely finished in order to sell them. We have done well, but this is a much more up scale type of home than what we are used to working on so it's more of a challenge to make sure we are going to appeal to that range of buyer looking for a home in this price range. This house has 4,000 s.f. of living space and, as mentioned, in water-front, dbl car att'd garage, central air, etc. etc. Our investment dollars are limited, but that is something we ARE accustomed to in the sense of using imagination, elbow grease, our own work and a reasonable amount of talent to make the best of a home rather than just dishing out $$$ to someone else to do so. I am taking your comment to heart and even before reading it this morning, I woke up with an idea that I have been discussing with my husband even more positively since reading your comment. See, there's another link in all this......I mentioned oak hardwood and porcelain floors. We have done those in the rest of the house (hardwood in the living room and reading area off of the living room, down the hall to, and in, the 3 good-sized bedrooms and, of course, in their closets. The master has an extra wide "hall" that passes in front of an 8.5' X 8' walk in closet to the master bath. That whole section was done in cork flooring and will be the only flooring that won't be ceramic / porcelain or hardwood on this level. Now, back to the new twist for the kitchen. The original flooring in the kitchen and the back hall / entrance is ceramic and is rather neutral in tones, but our original plan was to use the new, gorgeous porcelain tiles we put in at the front entrance (and inlaid in the form of a large diamond in the hallway hardwood between the front entrance of the house and dining room) so that everything flowed throughout the house, it was either all the same hardwood or all the same porcelain. My husband is now flinching at the thought of removing the ceramics in the kitchen, back entrance. I understand as it is properly laid and will undoubtedly be a huge amount of work to remove. I'm just really unsatisfied with the thought of not having ALL the flooring flow. Do you happen to know if there is a way to remove the ceramics without damaging the prepped floor underneath? It's a type of plastic "bubble" looking stuff that you adhere to the sub-floor with a cement type mix. You then adhere your ceramic or porcelain tiles to it once it has dried. We used it under the porcelain we installed here and we can see that it was used under the ceramics in the kitchen. If there is a way of salvaging that when we remove the tiles, it would save a lot of $$$ and of course work in the end. 38 hours ago · Like olldroo lauramaepatrie - not always easy to visualise things but if your doors are solid timber then there should be ways of fixing them - or worst case scenario replacing just the damaged ones. I'm thinking if you sand the damaged ones back you should be able to remove the darker markings too. The surface wood markings is probably just basically ground in dirt. The other way I often have success is to use steel wool to scour the dirt and finish by rubbing Scandinavian Teak Oil into the timber also using steel wool. This oil seems to work well on most timbers but you can get other colours in oil if one might match your timber better. Can't help you with your tiles sorry, they do sound a big job. Perhaps you could talk to some local tilers and see what is involved. It sounds to me like the plastic would lift easier to remove the tiles rather than try to remove the tiles from the plastic. It all depends on how solid an adhesive it is. It all depends on patterns in the tiles, but if your entrance tiles are patterned and the kitchen fairly plain, then I think leaving things as they are would be fine - a stand alone entrance feature looks fine, in fact yours sounds very dramatic. Another alternative, if you did take up the kitchen tiles would be to replace them with the cork. I love cork for kitchens, it does take a bit of care, but it is so much softer underfoot and kinder to feet and joints (especially older ones). PS I'm on the wrong side of middle aged too so I completely understand things from the $$$ aspect. 30 hours ago · 1 lauramaepatrie olldroo, thank you once again for your input. You sound as though you know a good deal about wood for sure. Are / were you a cabinet m aker or carpenter of some kind? I'd like to hear more about these oils with colour in them.......the idea I woke up with this morning is exactly what you've suggested. Sand down the real rough ones, then using a stain / varnish or gel stain or whatever seems to work best to try to match the finish as best we can to make the cupboards work without anything jumping out at you (like the worn cupboard fronts do). I think changing up the hardware to something more modern (thinking brushed nickel, sleek door handles and drawer pulls, both the same) and some really sharp tiling for a back splash to draw the attention and add a wow factor. I thank you for your input and I'll wait to see if you can provide me with more info on this oil stuff. Is it hard to work with? What is the advantage as opposed to just stain and then varnish.......? 25 hours ago · Like olldroo lauramaepatrie - I'm just a senior with lots of experience, especially in the trial and error DIY department. I have picked up a bit about wood more from the Tasmanian Oak panelling, skirtings and architraves I have in my home. Can't help you much with oil brands because ours would be different to yours (I'm an Aussie), but I'm sure the guys at Home Depot or someplace similar would be able to guide you. I love hardware stores, I leave hubby at home and do what I call my "dumb broad act". I just ask every conceivable question, play the helpless little woman, even con free samples, until I get all the information I need. Works every time (don't tell anyone). I learned the trick about using the steel wool when we first put the Tassie Oak in, even though it is a very hard timber the steel wool still rubs it up enough for the oil to get in and it leaves a lovely patina on the timber. We used white shellac on it to bring the colour of the timber up and then oiled to preserve and maintain it, but I have also used oil on timber with other stains also with success. I have even put it over surfaces I'm sure are varnished and it still works. I re-oil it every 4 or 5 years and it still looks great after 35 years. It is very quick and easy to do, a little messy, but I would much rather oil 10 walls than paint 1. Put it this way, if your doors have had it anyway, you can't make them much worse, so you really have nothing to l

No, not yet. We filled a 10x30 storage unit completely with stuff stacked all the way up to the 10 foot ceiling And, the garage still has all his tools and a late 70s motorcycle which I am absolutely not taking responsibility for! Weather this time of year is unpredictable; Sunday was an ice storm so we ended up just closing up mid afternoon. Monday was decent and today was really warm - 16C - low 60sF - and then the rain absolutely poured down so we had to stop mid afternoon again. Tomorrow is supposed to be rain in the morning, changing to snow and getting colder by afternoon but the furniture and tools absolutely must get moved anyway as Thursday is supposed to be even colder. My patience is almost completely worn through. Today I concentrated on getting the stuff I had no use for out of the house and garage. The other stuff either he can take with him or not, but I'm feeling that he's taking advantage of the situation by not doing a reasonable amount of effort. He's running out of storage space so he's trying to cherry-pick the good stuff and leave all the junk behind...nope, that wasn't the deal! We agreed to help him move, not do it for him. Then, it took me 25 minutes with the blasted automated assistant for the electric company then finally had to go to a live agent and start over and once again provide all the information already entered with the keypad. And, we aren't done yet as we have a choice of service providers so we have to call them too Ridiculous. I just keep reminding myself that it's a nice house at a nice price, even after I have to pay everything to get him out

Astraea, when I emptied mum's unit, I just absolutely turned everything upside down and inside out. Luckily I found money in the first drawer I opened that put me on my guard. Talking about going out in the car reminded me - mum had a disabled parking sticker that had to be attached to the windscreen if the car she was in was parked in a disabled parking area. When she came to live with me I kept it in the glovebox of my car at the ready, but somewhere along the line when mum had first got the sticker someone must have given her very clear instructions to ensure she kept the sticker with her at all times as they were readily stolen. Obviously whoever had explained said that it had to be displayed on the windscreen when the car was parked, but mum, in the fog she was in by this time, didn't get that bit. One time I had to go to the RTA to have mum's address changed to mine so of course I had to take her with me for her to verify things. I parked in a disabled spot as they are wider for wheelchair access, put the sticker on the windscreen, got the wheelchair out of the boot and got mum into it, not taking any notice of anything she was doing. We got into the RTA, took a number and waited a while before we were served, then I took mum over to the counter and explained the situation, whereupon mum pulls the sticker out of her handbag to show the clerk. Of course I freaked as they are very quick to book you if you are illegally parked in these spaces and told mum she wasn't to take it off the windscreen again. Mum felt she was really going to get one up on me as she was always going crook at me putting it on the windscreen for people to see it and break into the car to steal it, and told the clerk to tell me the rules how I wasn't to leave it in the car. I think the poor woman wet herself seeing the comedy side of it, but trying to keep a straight face while she tried to get through to mum that it had to be on the windscreen. Of course mum just kept arguing with her then that she knew better because of what she had been told. In the end the clerk told me to get back to the car before I got booked but said to let her know if I was and she would try to clear things for me. Fortunately I wasn't but after that I had to be so careful to ensure I put the sticker on my side of the car (which it wasn't supposed to be) but it was the only way I could stop mum getting to it.